1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of multiplexing hardware, and more particularly, to hardware devices for multiplexing packetized video streams.
2. Description of the Related Art
There exists a significant demand for systems capable of multiplexing video streams such as (MPEG transport streams) onto an output channel. Such systems require estimates of the input data rate of the video streams in order to operate efficiently. The estimation of input data rates for the video streams may be performed in software. However, software based data rate estimation is slow. Thus, there exists a need for hardware based mechanism for estimating the input data rates of video streams.